


It Could Be Sweet

by Digs



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: F/M, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-29
Updated: 2014-01-29
Packaged: 2018-01-10 12:29:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1159766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Digs/pseuds/Digs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What if Alana couldn't take her own advice? An AU version of their scene in 1.08.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It Could Be Sweet

**Author's Note:**

> Infinite thanks to APB and Cally for their beta services, and, relatedly, for putting up with me.
> 
> Title courtesy of Portishead.
>
>> _you don't get something for nothing  
>  could we try a little harder  
> it could be sweet_

As she put on her signal for the Leesburg Pike exit, Alana realized that she still hadn't figured out what she was going to do.

Will needed a friend right now, anybody could see it. Jack had been pushing him harder than was good for him—for either of them, really. She'd known Jack for years, and he'd always been tough on his team, but he'd also been, if not careful exactly, then honorable. These days his obsession with the Ripper was starting to drive him to treat people as if they were disposable.

Which, she thought, eying the exurban shopping plazas looming up around her, Will was not.

Like everyone else in the criminal profiling world, she'd heard of Will Graham before she met him: the antisocial agent with a knack for getting into bad guys' heads. But when he came to Quantico, her first thought was, _cute for an axe murderer_ ; and though the gossip continued to buzz around him, Graham came in on time, gave lectures of startling insight and clarity, and ducked out again. Leaving Alana wondering after him.

Now he needed a friend, so she was dropping by. It was on her way home, more or less.

Her mind ran over what she might find when she got there. Will probably wasn't even home. He could be out walking his dogs, or haring after more of Jack's monsters, or something. Or, if he was home, he'd probably be working, and he'd be annoyed to be interrupted. Maybe she was overreacting.

But another image kept flickering through her mind: Will at the door, face puffy, eyes red-rimmed, trying to put his defenses back up. If she caught him out in a vulnerable moment, he'd be awkward, he'd bristle a little, but she wasn't reading him wrong, surely, to think he trusted her. If she was just still, and not pushy, he might sit next to her and open up for once. Hannibal was a terrific psychiatrist, but very reserved. Will needed someone to _like_ him, to help reflect him back to himself, so he could see there were no monsters in the shadows. A friend.

The exurbs fell away as she wound west towards his house. Fall had been slow and damp this year, but the soldier-tall trees were stripped, now, to their winter grays. The first snow had come down yesterday. They'd already salted the roads, but patches of white hung on across the hills, melting slowly into the thick leaf litter.

He might really be ill—with how hard he was pushing himself lately, it wouldn't be any surprise. He'd be glassy-eyed and flushed, refusing to take anything for it, probably; she'd feel his forehead, talk some aspirin into him—if he didn't have any, there was some in her purse—sit with him until he felt a little better. He'd liked the Flannery O'Connor. If he was really feeling out of it, he might let her read to him. He'd looked so peaceful, listening half-asleep as she read to Abigail.

The windows of his little house shone a reassuring yellow. He was home, then, after all. Sometime since the snow had come down, he'd salted his driveway and the slate path to his door. It radiated a warm, cared-for domesticity—the complete opposite of the echoing Hobbs house, with its reek of industrial cleaners laid thick over the smell of blood. That smell had followed her to the Bloomington hospital, twining around her, turning her stomach; she'd hardly been able to sit through the ER doctor's perfunctory exam.

She was still catching eddies of it weeks later, here and there, in hallways and bathrooms. It was just a conditioned aversion, the predictable consequence of having bad memories linked to strong sense impressions, but still, when the weekend cleaning crew had come by that afternoon, the floor-polish smell had snaked in through her office door and wrapped around her until she choked. It was the smell of horror: not just the honest stink of death but the awful chemical screech that tried to make it polite.

The path up to his door was gritty with salt. She didn't have to wait long for Will to open the door at her knock. “Hi, Alana,” he said blankly, looking—not upset. Not even really surprised to see her. Mostly he looked distracted, scrubbing dust from his forehead with the back of his wrist. She'd caught him in the middle of something, clearly.

She saw what as soon as she walked in: a hole was gaping through the sturdy brick above the fireplace. She stared uneasily. It wasn't messily done, but it was eerie, at odds with the simple order all around. This wasn't any of the things she had been expecting.

“I heard an animal scrabbling inside it. Trapped,” he said, looking at the hole and not at her.

Wolf Trap wasn't _that_ backwoods, to have two hurt animals sloping through in scarcely a month. Will was like some kind of magnet for wild things. “What kind of animal was it?”

“It might've been a raccoon,” he said colorlessly.

Two hurt animals in a month. She thought about the first one. The one that had left no tracks, or blood, or fur. “Might've been?” She felt queasy.

“Well, by the time I knocked a hole in the chimney, it climbed out the top.”

An awful suspicion iced her gut. She scrambled to keep a normal conversation going. “Well, at least it got out.”

It wasn't convincing and they both knew it. The oddity of her presence seemed to strike him for the first time. “What are _you_ doing out?”

This at least she was prepared for. “I thought I'd come over, make some noise, shoo away any predators at your door.” She'd drafted that line in the car, polishing it to be shiny and unassailable. It came out pretty well, considering that the first version had been _If I sit in my office for one more minute I'll cry_. “But it looks like you're making plenty of noise all by yourself.”

He was on her trail now, though. Even rattled like this, he wasn't easy to misdirect. “You avoided being in a room alone with me essentially since I met you,” he said. “You were smooth about it,” he added, at her expression.

“Evidently not smooth enough,” she said ruefully. But her embarrassment was cut with a thrill of pleasure. All those times she had been thinking about how to protect him, he'd thought about her too. He thought about her when she wasn't there.

“And now you're making house calls?” He shifted warily on the balls on his feet. Alana felt hyperconscious, suddenly, of their bodies circling each other around the small room.

“Just a drive-by on my way home,” she said. “Since you're not my patient.”

“No,” he said, drawing close. “I'm not.” Her heartbeat sped up. He was going to kiss her, she realized. And she was leaning toward him already.

His lips met hers, and her heart leapt. As she leaned into him, watery-kneed, she found herself thinking that it was a fluke, it was just stress, she wasn't interested in Will, of all people. But if she was being honest, her first thought as she ran out of her office, pulling her coat tight around her, hadn't been for Will's mental state. It had been all scattered sense memory: the way he looked at her. His blunt but cautious hands.

Her feeling that she shouldn't be kissing him seemed faint and unreasonable, but it was still there, like a handrail on the side of a cliff. She broke the kiss with an effort. “I'm confused,” she said, which had the benefit, at least, of being true.

“You have to stop thinking so much,” he said. I haven't been thinking at all, she thought, a little hysterically. Of course she'd known she was attracted to him. She wasn't an idiot. But it had been so useful to _not_ know at the same time, to look serenely at all the people who had their fingers in Will's life and say, I'm just trying to be his friend. It was easy to tell herself that she was thinking about him at all hours of the day because she had his best interests at heart.

Rattled, she stumbled over her words, stupidly reluctant to make it real by admitting she was kissing Will Graham, that she wanted to—do more than kiss him. “I can stop the thinking if we're not—but if we're—”

“Intimate.” He was so straightforward about it; it twisted low in her gut.

“The way that I am in relationships—not that this is a relationship, it's just a kiss,” she hurried, “a great kiss. But the way that I am isn't—compatible with the way that—”

“With the way _I_ am?” He was very still against the noise in her head. “At least be honest with me. You don't usually play games.”

“I don't usually want to sleep with my friends.” She swallowed. “It's—this is hard for me.” Well. That hadn't been part of the plan. It was true, though, her feelings were usually much better contained. In the relentless emotional grind of grad school, “boundaries” had become her watchword, and she'd stuck by it ever since. Her party manners were long since perfected: bring drinks, smile, leave early. It worked very well. People always seemed happy to see her.

It got a wry laugh from him, at least. A little of the tension leached out of him. “You make it sound like friendships are supposed to be easy,” he said.

“Depends on how you pick them.” Her good sense was still shouting at her to zip up her coat and get out—but he would know her excuses for the thin and frightened things they were. She'd be right to leave, but she'd be right to feel like a coward, too, as the memory of him trailed her out. And there was nothing at home but leftovers and echoing rooms. She'd driven an hour to see him, with a department meeting tomorrow and a lecture to prep, just to kiss him and then spook?

She was only teaching one course this semester, supposedly to give her time to work on her book, but instead she had spent more evenings than she cared to admit wandering restlessly around her house, eating cereal in her pajamas, thinking about Abigail, and Will; trying not to think about how little good she seemed to be doing anyone.

“Will.”

He looked at her, his attention like a light.

When she'd gotten home from Minnesota, she'd taken a long weekend where she barely even left the house. She'd managed to do just enough work to avoid getting behind, but mostly just watched TV, pressing half-consciously at the lump on her head. She told herself it was self-care and tried to think if there was anyone she could ask to come over and sit with her.

“Do you want me to be honest with you?” she asked.

He didn't answer right away. “How honest are we talking?” he asked.

She took a breath. “There was never any animal in your chimney. You were having a hallucination.”

His face crumpled. “That's—very honest.”

“Which means that there is something wrong.” She tried to keep her composure. Run it like a proof. The facts, one at a time—

“There are a lot of things wrong with me. You can ask anyone,” he said, shuttered again.

“You can't lock this away, Will. You don't have that luxury,” she said, voice rising despite herself. “There is something wrong, and we can _deal_ with it. Sensory hallucinations aren't uncommon. They can be caused by a lot of different things. You could have a neurological problem.”

“I thought you preferred easy friendships, Dr Bloom,” he said.

Easy, responsible friendships. Right. She was all stocked up on professional detachment, on reserve, on good sense. They kept her safe—safely watching this man twist in pain. Safely driving herself home from the airport with a concussion.

“I used to,” she said.

“And what changed?” He stepped closer. He was painfully beautiful like this, full of an intensity that was like hunger.

She was a professional. She was a doctor. Getting too close could hurt them both so much—but she was damned if she was going to leave him here to eat himself alive.

Alana looked away. “I met someone braver than me.”

This time, when he kissed her, she didn't pull away, but turned her face up and met him. He put his arm around her waist, and it felt like coming in from the cold.

He was a great kisser, it turned out—and it had been long enough since she'd met anyone she wanted to look at twice that she let herself shove down her misgivings and just enjoy it, feeling the breadth of his shoulders, his slim body, just a little soft.

After a minute his mouth turned searching and urgent against hers, his eyes tight shut as if he were straining to hear a faraway sound. He reached for the hem of her skirt.

“Wait,” she said, dizzy and overwhelmed. “Can we—just, be slow.”

“Sorry,” he said, wincing, pulling away, but Alana caught his mouth with her own and kissed him sweetly until he leaned back into her, putting a hand tentatively on her upper arm. She half-stepped to him, pressing close. They both slowed, letting the moment unroll lazily around them; after a while she felt him relax a little, the manic edge draining away. On an impulse, she slipped her hand down and gave his butt a squeeze.

“To your satisfaction?” he asked, his smile making him look almost boyish, all of a sudden. He looked _well_. Her heart flopped painfully.

“It's a great butt,” she said, grinning up at him.

He retaliated by kissing her neck with great seriousness—her breath quickened involuntarily. He kissed her again, gentle, with just the barest scrape of teeth. It seemed impossible that he could be touching her so tenderly, easing her coat off with all the patience in the world. It was like a secret inside her that she could barely hold.

He pulled away a little, fingers tracing her kiss-reddened skin, the expression on his face suddenly—off. She flashed back on the way Abigail worried the scar on her neck; thought of the blood that must have poured out of her, long since washed away by the time Alana saw her lying pale and still in the hospital. Will trembled, his hand pressed to her neck, eyes darting past her, fixed on something behind her that wasn't there.

Shit, she thought. Alana Bloom, you fucking disgrace.

She brought her hands up to his shoulders, said his name, trying to get him to look at her, hushing him in a half-nonsense litany of comfort: it's okay, I've got you, you're here, you're here. Her voice was very steady. Fury blazed inside her.

After a long minute he met her gaze lucidly and nodded, rubbing his face with his hands, but the hunted look in his eyes remained. Yeah, let's go ahead with a preliminary diagnosis of PTS fucking D, she thought, steering him into his room and sitting beside him on the bed. One of the dogs came over and thrust his nose across Will's thigh, winning an absentminded face-rub that eased the tension in Will's shoulders a little.

She crossed her legs, feeling in her stocking feet not like a doctor, but like a college kid again, plunged into an emotional world that seemed, for the first time, big enough to drown in. Which was absurd: every day of her professional life was spent studying the most dangerous deformations of the human psyche. Post-traumatic stress disorder was just a garden-variety case of the sniffles in comparison. But she felt suddenly much less like a rock and much more like she was digging her heels into the murky river-bottom, trying to keep a hold of him. This is what happens when you're reckless, she told herself, sternly.

“Talk to me,” she said. “What was that?”

“I was having—a, a flashback,” he said. “To … Hobbs.”

“I thought you might be,” she said.

“And you, you were—”

“Abigail?” she asked gently.

“Dying.”

A draft crept in from the wide wind-shivered fields around them. Alana mustered her forces. “PTSD can cause intrusive visual and auditory sensations, as the mind struggles to integrate painful memories.”

He snorted. “I'm aware of that.”

“Sorry,” she said, abashed. “You're not my patient, I know. But with your other symptoms I do want to get you a scan, just to see what turns up. Find out if something neurological is—contributing. I can talk to Hannibal about a referral if you want.” Neurological problems were no walk in the park, but she felt suddenly attached to the idea.

“I don't think he'd—I'll talk to him.”

“I know a very good neurologist in Reston. She'd probably be easier for you to get to than Hannibal's Baltimore contacts.”

She couldn't read his face. “That might be good,” he said.

“This isn't the first flashback you've had.”

“No,” he said, not meeting her eyes.

She busied herself petting the dogs, who had picked up on Will's distress and were anxious for comfort. She kept herself angled away from Will, letting her hands find the sore spots on one of the older dogs, who leaned into her, wuffing a little, as she waited.

When he spoke up, it was with the one question that she didn't want to answer. “What is … this. Between us. Given that I'm—” He broke off.

It was her turn to stretch out the silence. “I wanted to be your friend,” she said slowly, “and it seemed like the best thing I could do for you was give you space. But I have—I have feelings for you, I have to do better—”

“Better at what, shooing away predators from my door? Or kissing me?”

She winced. “I feel like I'm either too far away from you, or too close. I can't get it into focus.”

“I do feel blurry,” he said, smiling grimly.

“I'm sorry, I shouldn't have—I can stop—pushing you.”

He swallowed. “I didn't mean to—”

“It's okay—”

“I don't want you to go,” he said quietly, looking down at his hands. “When I'm with you, it's like … the only mirror that isn't fogged.” He touched a lock of hair at her temple. “You're so—bright. You shine.”

Lightly, to cover up the tremble in her voice, she said, “I wish my students thought so. They seem to be under the impression that I'm the bitch-queen of hell.”

“They're afraid of you, too? Oh good. I was starting to think it was just—me.”

It startled a laugh out of her, and after a moment he joined in, the very real tension at Quantico in the wake of the Tattlecrime article making the thin joke inappropriately, undeservedly funny. Long pent-up stress tumbled out of them helplessly.

When they'd subsided she confessed, “One of the meatheads in Abnormal Psych swaggered up to me after class this week with this line about extra reading recommendations. He was,” she paused, looking for the right way to say _a tool_ , “unusually sure of himself. So I told him that there were suggestions for further reading in the syllabus, and if he hadn't managed to find them on his own, he would be sent home as unfit for investigative work.”

“Professor Bloom, you are a marvel,” he said, grinning at her.

There didn't seem to be anything to do next but swallow her answering laugh and kiss him again, running her hand through his messy hair. He tugged her over to him, so that she was kneeling on the bed, straddling his lap. “I could get used to this,” she said, cupping his face. His eyes were very blue and clear of pain as he looked up at her.

“My luxurious accomodations?”

“No,” she said, “leverage,” pushing him flat on the bed.

The way his breath caught was not lost on her, and she kissed him fiercely for it, but lightened up after a moment, resting on one forearm alongside him.

“Mm,” he said. “I feel compelled to grant you quite a lot of leverage.”

“You should be careful who you say that to.”

“I don't meet many people as persuasive as you, Dr Bloom,” he said, resting a hand on her waist. “Maybe I should persuade the dogs to leave us alone.”

She laughed sheepishly and nodded; the dogs trotted out at little more than a stern look from Will. He shut the door firmly after them, but when he turned back to her, an unreadable discomfort flashed over his face. She felt stiff with awkwardness, jolted by the recognition that her excuses had let her get in much deeper than she'd intended, and shifted uncomfortably, pushing herself up to a seat.

She'd never been in his bedroom before. When she'd come to tell him about Abigail, she had been surprised by his beautiful little house, Will out barefoot with his dogs as if there were no such thing as murder. If she hadn't had feelings for him before, just that would have done it, to see him sleep-sweet and private in the golden morning light. Before she barged in.

His room was smaller than she'd thought. The bed was unmade, blankets everywhere as if kicked, and there was a—motor?—in one corner, tools splayed around it. The mess looked lived-in, as though each item represented its own train of thought, only temporarily abandoned, left in readiness to be picked up again another time. A space not maintained for other people's viewing. It was interrupted just by her looking at it, unable to read each object's task and placement, looking at the whole subtle order and seeing clutter.

He gestured apologetically after the dogs. “They like to keep an eye on me.” He seemed suddenly not to know what to do with his hands, drumming them on his thighs as he came back to the bed and sat down beside her, not as close as before.

“Is this too—fast?” she asked, hesitant. “We can call it a day.”

“I did have some work I was supposed to do,” he said, shoulders tightening.

She frowned at him. He frowned at the messy floor.

Suddenly understanding, Alana pressed up to her knees behind him and bent to kiss the nape of his neck. The tension in his shoulders loosened, and he pressed back into her, so she bit him lightly, as if to shake him by the scruff of the neck. “You can put it off,” she told him. He let out a low hum of assent.

She looked down over him, considering, then fisted a hand into his hair and tugged his head to the side, kissing the exposed side of his neck and licking the shell of his ear. He groaned, hot and pliable under her hands. She swung around to straddle his lap again, tugging off his shirt; in return he kissed her thoroughly, his hands encouraging her wrap skirt to ride up around her thighs, untucking her shirt and pulling it off. He ground up against her, the bulge of his erection pressing through her thin panties. Alana saw stars.

She felt flushed with victory. She hadn't quite believed he was real, not a ghost always fading around the next corner, but here she was, touching him, brushing her cheek against his stubble, smelling the cedar and musk scent of him.

“You like it when I push you around,” she said.

He swallowed. “Yes.”

“Better if I hit you?”

He looked at her, pupils dilating. “Not—today.”

She thought she managed to respond to that, but it was hard to tell through the white-blind rush of her arousal. To do this again—to hit him—see him shudder and buck, flushed, reddening, turning towards her for more—

“Take off your pants,” she said.

A sense of acceleration was sweeping her onwards, the kind of second-drink rush that makes every move feel quicker, more intuitive, more perfectly calibrated. She pushed him down on the bed, pinning one hand, and ranged over him, trying to find out what made him tick. His hips jerked helplessly when she brushed a thumb over his nipple; she replaced her thumb with her mouth and he moaned outright.

Eventually she turned her attention to his cock. She wrapped her hand around him and the shock of it juddered through his whole body. Leaning in to claim a kiss, she stroked him softly at first, then more firmly. It was almost hard to look at him, his eyes tight shut, his mouth open.

“Can you—talk to me,” he said, voice cracking.

Alana was usually quiet during sex. Being naked was crossing one boundary; talking about what she wanted was an entirely different one. It had been a long time since she'd allowed the emotional stakes to get that high.

“You're so—beautiful,” she said, haltingly. “I look at you and I don't want to—look at anything else, I just want to be near you.” Her own breath was ragged. “I think about, about how much I want to see you like this. I think about what your face would look like if I could only—touch you.”

“Oh,” he said, soundlessly.

“I want—can I fuck you—”

“Jesus, yes.”

She slicked a condom over him and sank onto him, a curse dropping from her mouth at the overwhelming feeling of it, her eyes wide.

Will put up a hand to her face, a little clumsily.

“I have this fantasy,” he said, “that I'm—jerking off, in—” a breathless laugh, “in my office, and you come in, by accident, and you—see me—”

“ _Christ_ , Will.”

“And you don't—say anything, but you don't—go, either,” he went on, panting a little. “You just look at me, and I'm close already, I don't—stop, and I know you can see—everything, that I'm—embarrassed by how much I want you—”

He shut his eyes, tipping his head back. Alana reached forward and took him by the throat, putting the lightest possible pressure across his windpipe: he gasped, pressing himself a little into her hand, panting.

“That's right,” she told him. “I've got you. This is what you want, isn't it, you want to be held down, you want to, to be bare to me—”

Will was gasping panic-fast and loud in the quiet room, and his eyes were tight shut, but he was still arching his throat into her touch.

“I can see how much you want it.” He was shaking beneath her, sheened in sweat, totally undone; she fucked him desperately, bracing herself with her free arm. Thinking of him flinching away from Jack as if bruised; thinking of him disappearing down the back stairs of the department. Hiding. “I see you, Will. Look at me.”

His eyes stayed closed. She let go of his throat and cupped his cheek instead. “Look at me.”

When he met her gaze at last, there was no trace of his wry smile. Instead he looked up at her pleadingly, letting her see the toll his life had been taking on him. Not ecstatic but scraped, desolate, nakedly wounded. Raw with fear.

She felt half-crazy with fury and love, benedictions tumbling from her mouth. “You're so good, Will, beautiful, I've got you, let go for me—”

His hips stuttered, losing the rhythm, and he came, hand fisting in the sheets.

She slid off and placed an openmouthed kiss on his sweaty shoulder, almost as overwhelmed as he was. After a few shaky breaths, she watched his breathing calm and his posture loosen with a proprietary satisfaction. When he'd come back to himself enough to look over at her, Alana felt a smile steal over her face; an answering spark lit his slightly dazed expression.

And god, it had been a long time since she'd had a proper cuddle. Will was a natural, tucking her against him comfortably, with none of that bony tentativeness that some men default to. Tell Chilton to put _that_ in his profile, she thought smugly. Top decile of Ericsson's Snuggling Inventory. Heart-wrenchingly beautiful. Great butt.

She drowsed against his chest, thoughts wandering sleepily. The last time she'd had sex hardly even bore thinking about. A blind date last year, a defense contractor friend of a friend. He'd been nice enough, but she'd felt bored by the time their entrees came. She'd slept with him anyway, just to see if it would scratch the itch.

Will was quiet, stroking her back in a long lulling rhythm. Contractor guy had been considerate in bed, but it had sort of felt like filling out a form, right down to the vaguely paternalistic kiss on her forehead at the end. She shivered just to remember the way Will had moved under her, responsive, impossibly alive.

But then, Dan—that was his name, Dan something—had seemed like a really straightforward, put together person. He'd talked about going to visit his mom in Vermont, and watching soccer with his friends; he had friends. Was it really his fault if she hadn't wanted to tell him about her work?

Will's hand settled on the small of her back, the barest bones of a hug. “I want to be good for you,” he murmured into her hair.

An inky chill bloomed in her belly. _You are not_ , she thought, _going to be good for me_ , and tried in vain to unthink it. Will was amazing, genuinely; the more time she spent with him the more she could feel him, the core of compassion and integrity under all his self-defense—but how was this going to go, really, when he was so fragile right now? Was she just kidding herself about the neurological angle because she didn't want to accept the alternative—and how had she gotten into a situation where she was practically wishing serious health problems on somebody she, she felt about the way she felt about Will?

_Is he sure I'm really here, right now?_ The bottom dropped out of her stomach. She realized the silence was stretching out. “We just—we have to be careful,” she said numbly.

He looked at her uncertainly, hurt. “I know,” he said. “I'm going to get better,” he said, more firmly. Of course he knew this was real, that was a ridiculous thought, paranoiac. He'd been clear-eyed and sensitive and grounded this whole time. Except for the flashback. Disruptive auditory sensations and one flashback: PTSD, not psychosis, not dissociative fugue.

He pushed up to his elbow. “You didn't get off,” he said, running his hand over her hip.

“Um—no, that's okay,” she said, and regretted it immediately. She was screwing this up royally. This was okay. Risky, difficult, but she was willing to take risks for Will. She just needed some space to think it through.

He pushed up to a seat, sighing. “I could use a shower. You're welcome to stay tonight, if you want.” He did a good job of masking his reluctance to offer, but not a very good job. She thought of his bed all in disarray, before. Not sleeping well? Nightmares, probably.

“I have to pull my papers together for class tomorrow—it's not that late yet, right? I should really go,” she said, checking her phone. “Much as I would rather stay,” she added, nosing up to him for a kiss, flirting as a kind of apology for her coolness. He kissed her back readily enough, smiling a little.

“Will you be at Quantico tomorrow?” she asked, collecting her scattered clothes.

“I think I'll be up in Baltimore working the opera case,” he said; adding, as a grumpiness settled over his features, “because I don't spend enough time on 495.”

She wanted to tell him to be careful—somebody had to—but she wasn't sure if he would bristle at her meddling. “Be careful out there, Will.”

He just nodded, biting his lip. “I'm giving a lecture Thursday afternoon.”

“Could we—get dinner?” she asked.

“I'd like that,” he said.

She pulled on her coat and grabbed her bag. At the door he kissed her again, briefly. He looked like there was something he wanted to tell her, but he only said good night, and she turned to go.

The sun had long finished setting, leaving the house in its own pool of cast light; the first rush of cold air was bracing on her warm skin. It was a little above freezing, she thought. There was a faint smell of smoke.

By the time she got to her car and buckled up, the chill had crept in through her coat. Alana shivered, turning up the heat, and pulled out onto the dark road.


End file.
